Customer Reviews

David Irving's Hitler: A Faulty History Dissected

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Eberhard Jackel and David Kirk offer up a less-than-interesting piece of work whose sole aim is discredit the controversial author and historian, David Irving. For those who don't know, Mr. Irving has courageously chosen throughout his career to write historical profiles of people like Adolf Hitler that are objective and well researched. This has not pleased other authors, members of academic circles and several victims' rights groups. The tactic usually used in discrediting David Irving is a smear campaign. This book, although with the same motives, attempts to disprove and discredit Irving on historical grounds. The problem is that very early on in this book it becomes quite clear that the authors idea of "research" is to reference already existing work on the subject matter. This of course is not real research, but a way or rehashing and reinforcing accepted yet often-unproven conclusions, something which has plagued the WW2 book genre for several decades. What we have here is a book not only with dishonorable intentions, but a piece of work which insists on treading where hundreds if not thousands of others have tread before. This of course has always been David Irving's contention, that the truth has been lost. Somewhere from point A to point B, the line between factual historical writing, and myth and assumption has been blurred. If you really want to know what all the fuss is about, check out one of the many David Irving books for yourself offered through Amazon. Decide for yourself!

This book is an exercise in character assassination. The workis plagued by erratic, unsubstantiated conclusions, gross inaccuraciesand a jagged, occasionally chaotic writing style. Ebhard Jackel has a nasty habit of generalizing and jumping from point to point without offering the necessary expansion of his theories. Even the footnotes are vague. The author, almost without exception, cites other literary works as "proof" of his conclusions. This type of circular logic is not becoming of professional historians or even writers in general...

There are much better critiques of Irving's work than the one mentioned here. Amazon should be commended for offering literary works with alternative viewpoints. END

Does David Irving deserve censure for his grotesque belief that Adolf Hitler knew nothing of the Holocaust? Of course. Is Eberhard Jaeckel the historian to dismantle Irving? No. Jaeckel himself has a long history of gaffes regarding Hitler. In 1983, he published in in Germany, 'Hitler's Saemtliche Aufzeichnungen" which purported to publish many "new" Hitler poems and drawings. The problem was that most of the work consisted of worthless forgeries. Jaeckel should have known this, any reputable historian would have known instantly.

The problem with Irving is that he is a diligent researcher, he just is corrupted with blatant racism which renders his conclusions on the Reich one-sided and specious. Any historian starting out with Irving's premises is standing on faulty ground. But Jaeckel is out of his league here and it clearly shows. His footnotes frequently lead to discredited sources and his conclusions are haphazard and disjointed.

Irving deserves critical, harsh examination, but it needs to be done by an historian of greater skill and repute than Jaeckel.

This is a review of DAVID IRVING'S HITLER: A FAULTY HISTORY DISSECTED - TWO ESSAYS BY EBERHARD JACKEL translated by Dr. H. David Kirk with comments by him and a foreword by Robert Fulford. Mine is the paperback edition published in 1993 and reprinted in 2000 by Ben-Simon Publications of Port Angeles, Washington, and Brentwood Bay, British Columbia.

At 56 pages of text, this is a short book. It includes footnotes and an index, but no bibliography. Dr. Kirk's translation appears to me to be competent and clear and his comments add to the work, in my opinion. Kirk was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria in British Columbia at the time this work was published. He'd previously served on the faculties of McGill and the University of Waterloo and has a solid academic reputation.

Robert Fulford is a journalist based in Toronto who helped cover the trials of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in Canada during the 1980s. Fulford sums up the importance of this issue in his foreword (p. 4) when he warns that if it's ignored, "the past can become a playground for evil."

To prevent that, Professor Kirk and Mr. Fulford brought us the works a significant German historian, Professor Eberhard Jaeckel of the University of Stuttgart. Jaeckel is well known for his 1972 book, HITLER'S WELTANSCHAUUNG: A BLUEPRINT FOR POWER. In that work, Jaeckel argued persuasively that the orthodox view of Hitler as an opportunist was misleading. Jaeckel's revision of this view added a dimension beyond mere opportunism to the Fuhrer because he formed the general outlines of his world view early and never changed direction. The two legs upon which this "Weltanschauung" rested were Hitler's hatred of "the Jewish race" and his notion that "the German race" needed more land ("Lebensraum.")

In Jaeckel's work, Hitler was still an opportunist, but he always worked toward the same, broad objectives. His book is getting scarce in its English translation and other works by Professor Jaeckel haven't been translated into English insofar as I am aware. That's the value of DAVID IRVING'S HITLER.

Jaeckel addresses David Irving's thesis that Hitler didn't order the Holocaust and wasn't informed about it by his subordinates. This is an extreme form of the so-called "Functionalist" interpretation which evolved during the "Historians' Conflict" ("Historikerstreit") in Germany during the late 1980s. Jaeckel emerged as one of the most prominent advocates of the "Intentionalist" approach.

The Fuhrer, in Jaeckel's interpretation, was both fully informed and completely in charge of what came to be called the Holocaust. Jaeckel deftly refutes Irving's arguments to the contrary. For example, Jaeckel notes (on p. 33) that as late as April 2, 1945, Hitler was bragging from the shelter of his Fuhrer Bunker in Berlin that "the National Socialist movement will have earned the world's undying gratitude, seeing that I had the Jews of Central Europe exterminated." These are hardly the words of David Irving's somewhat befuddled Fuhrer realizing that his subordinates had done something monstrous without his knowledge or consent.

If you're interested in Hitler, the Third Reich, National Socialism, the Holocaust especially Hitler's role in the Holocaust, you'll find DAVID IRVING'S HITLER to be quite useful. It can be difficult to find Professor Jaeckel's work online. Not much of it has been translated from German into English and the Professor's name appears with different spellings because of the umlauted "a". This is properly rendered "ae" in English, but a lot of sites show it simply as "a". Thus, you have to search both "Jaeckel" and "Jackel."

I found this book to be both concise and useful and gave it five stars.

Irving's American distributors have yanked his past books off the shelf under threat of boycott. The Anti-Defamation league finds Irving's books to be distasteful. The notion that publishers have nullified their contracts with Irving because of written inaccuracies is simply not true. Although I cannot claim to support all of Irving's findings, I do not like the notion of special interest groups determining what is "appropriate" reading and what is not.

'A Faulty History Dissected' takes aim at Irving and any other historian who has the audacity to deviate from the status quo. Jackel is undoubtedly in league with those members of the political/historical-writing community who wish to violate the right to free speech -oddly enough, something they claim to champion in other arenas.

David Irving is a fraud but, then, Jackel's work falls short of it's intended goal, and Jackel proves he's not any more reputable than his target. The book was loaned to me by a friend; having read it, I wouldn't recommend paying for the book. If interested, find it at your local library.

I'd stress one other point concerning David Irving. As noted, Irving is a fraud but so are the politically correct bureaucrats in Europe who use every tactic to censor his books and/or thoughts.

Clearly, Irving thinks, and believes, the murder of Jews by the Nazis didn't occur. He's wrong but are we so politically correct we've reached the point where a person is punished for what they think or believe? Irving has written extensively, and he's entitled to his opinion regardless of whether the historical facts support his conclusions.

I'm wondering if the individuals who make millions of dollars in the Holocaust Industry will support censoring those who deny the Armenian holocaust. I seriously doubt it since the ADL, the JDL and other beneficiaries of the holocaust industry believe the word 'holocaust' belongs exclusively to Jews.

In the United States or any country claiming to have democratic values, the business of censoring unpopular thoughts and writing is as undemocratic as it gets.

M. Robbins

Sigh. I see the Holocaust deniers and quibblers are out in force here. Irving is "courageous" and a victim of "censorship" because he is harshly criticized and dismissed by all reputable historians. Sure.

Contrary to what you may have read in the preceding reviews here, Jackel is a very reputable historian, the author of two invaluable and highly regarded works ("Hitler's Weltanschauung" and "Hitler in History") that are required reading for anyone who studies Nazi Germany. There is nothing outlandish or shabby in his current book criticizing Irving--it is in fact rock solid, like all his other work. This compact, admirable volume makes a good companion to Richard J. Evans's effective debunking of Irving.

A couple of reviewers have brought up the issue of censorship,
suggesting that Irving has been the target of censorship and that,
whatever his failings and however vile and racist he may be, he
shouldn't be censored. Some consider Jackel's book an attempt at such
censorship.

I agree with the view that Irving should not be censored. However I do
wish to point out that Irving's accusations of censorship against him
are a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black, and the sympathy
that some writers have accorded him as an injured party is misconceived.

Irving himself was the source of a very determined attempt at
censorship. He sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel and demanded that her
book on Holocaust denial be withdrawn by the publishers (Penguin) or
else they would face a very costly law suit. Over the long years during
which this lawsuit continued, at enormous expense to the defendants, a
number of publishers either refused to publish books critical of Irving,
or demanded that the authors tone down their criticisms. This happened,
for example, to John Lukacs, whose book was partly emasculated out of
fear by the publishers that Irving would sue them too.

Penguin fought the suit and won a sweeping victory. The British court
ruled that all of Lipstadt's statements about Irving were in fact true,
that Irving had deliberately distorted the history books he had
authored, and that he had done so out of racist and anti-semitic
motives. The verdict was rendered by Britain's leading expert judge on
libel law, and was affirmed through two of Irving's appeals.

During and after the trial, Irving portrayed himself as a victim of
censorship. He accused the Jewish community of having persecuted him.
He conveniently forgot that the accusations of biased research against
him were proven true and that no lies or libel had been published about
him. He conveniently forgot that the attempt at censorship was
initiated by him against Penguin and Lipstadt, not by them against him.
He conveniently forgot that neither Lipstadt nor Penguin ever approached
any publisher to demand that Irving's books be withdrawn or suppressed,
nor did they ever advocate that.

If I were a reputable publisher, concerned about the quality of my
books, I would never publish one of Irving's twisted "histories".
That's quite different from censorship.

Your on-line review by Siobhan is as grotesquely inaccurate as Irving himself. Irving, a Holocaust denier, has been denounced by every authority in the field. His most recent book on Goebbels was withdrawn by its American publisher because of Irving's outrageous misrepresentation of fact. The book under review is a needed corrective to Irving and Siobhan.

This is a good, concise book that demolishes David Irving's standing as an objective historian. He performs a valuable service sweeping away the pernicious intellectual rubbish purveyed by Irving. Contrary to what some other reviewers have said here, Jackel is a scrupulous and scholarly historian who is highly regarded by his peers.